Framed by a desire to understand the self as multiple, our piece looks to the multiplicities of our biology and how we survive in world which doesn’t always recognise these multiplicities. Some recent science papers have argued that long ago, a virus bound its genetic code to the genome of four-limbed animals, and therefore consciousness could be derived from a Virus.

We ask: if consciousness is actually a virus and our consciousness is derived from inhuman sources, what are the implications for how we understand our corporeality? Is our body containing of our identity? And is there a link between the body’s trauma and our hightened relation to other realms, to the ecstatic, to the numinous?